Residents of the Trout Gulch neighborhood in Aptos now officially own their own water.

After a two-year push to purchase their previous water district, the Trout Gulch Mutual Water Company, formed by neighborhood residents, on Tuesday finalized the purchase of Mar Vista Water Company, according to a press release.

The Mar Vista Water Company was put up for sale by longtime owner Jimmy Smith in 2006, and residents became alarmed over possible huge rake hikes when California American Water Co., then a subsidiary of German conglomerate RGE that had been at the center of a water battle in Felton, put in a bid to purchase Mar Vista.

“We’re all pretty excited about this,” TGMWC Director of Communications Sharon Hull said. “It’s been a long time coming. Some amazingly talented people have put a lot of effort, a lot of brain power, a lot of hours on this.”

“We had no idea what we were getting into,” TGMWC pro tem Board of Directors Chairman Jim Brownson said. “It took probably three times longer than we thought.”

A total of 188 customers in the Aptos hills are owner-customers of TGMWC, which had to jump through a number of legal hoops — including proving technical, managerial and financial capability — to finalize the purchase. TGMWC will have an elected board of directors, with day-to-day operations delegated to a licensed water-system operator and accounting contracted to an experienced bookkeeper, Brownson said.

The purchase was finalized for about $280,000, said Brownson, who noted that TGMWC was paying roughly 15 percent down, with the rest of the money coming from a loan from the Santa Cruz Community Credit Union. Existing customers will pay $350 to become a charter owner, with customers seeing a 26 percent increase in their rates, in part because “quite a few” upgrades need to be made and also as TGMWC works to pay off the loan, Brownson said. Overall, water rates would rank probably in the 40th percentile, he said. He added, however, that it was good that water users were the ones making the decisions.

“We’re the benefactors of (the water),” Brownson said. “We’re the ones whose well-being and property are dependent on it. We’re the right people to make those decisions.”

Brownson said that because the customers are the owners, TGMWC doesn’t have to get approval on setting rates and making decisions on upgrades. It is, however, required to meet water quality standards.

Currently, TGMWC is looking to set up an emergency interconnect tie with Soquel Creek Water District. If TGMWC has a well failure or catastrophic supply issue, an emergency interconnect would mean SCWD would provide a backup water supply. It’s also possible that down the road TGMWC could make a request to be annexed by SCWD, although Brownson said that would require a sizable fee from every customer.

“That is an open alternative,” he said. “In the meantime, we’re going full speed ahead with the plan of operating it with our own management.”

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(Published in 7/2/08 edition)

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